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Endeavour returns with dazzling images of Earth home planet

Posted: Wednesday, February 23, 2000

By Marcia DunnAssociated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six returned to Earth on Tuesday with more than a week's worth of radar images that will be transformed into the finest maps of the planet.

Commander Kevin Kregel guided the shuttle down through a clear sky moments after sunset. Gusty winds at the runway had forced him to make an extra swing around Earth, delaying the homecoming by 112 hours.

''Kevin, congratulations to you and the crew on a highly successful mission of mapping the world,'' Mission Control radioed once Endeavour rolled to a stop.

During their 11-day voyage, Endeavour's astronauts worked in round-the-clock shifts to keep two large radar antennas running -- one in the shuttle cargo bay and one on the end of a 197-foot mast. The method is expected to produce precise 3-D maps of Earth's peaks and valleys.

The radar mapped 43.5 million square miles of Earth's terrain at least twice, just 2.5 million square miles shy of NASA's original goal.

The surveyed land stretched as far north as British Columbia and as far south as Cape Horn and represented three-quarters of the world's terrain.

A faulty thruster on the end of the radar mast forced the crew to use extra shuttle fuel to steady the mast, the longest rigid structure ever deployed in space. To save fuel, the astronauts had to cut short their mapping by 13 hours.

''I thought this mission was one of the most challenging, difficult missions we ever undertook,'' said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. ''We deployed a 200-foot boom and held the tip to inches. The radar was a few thousand pounds. The technology was incredible.''

NASA's first order of business involved unloading the more than 300 digital tapes containing all the radar data. After several weeks of making copies of everything, the tapes will be flown to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Scientists will keep the originals in humidity- and temperature-controlled chambers.

''We're really going to baby these things, obviously, because they're our crown jewels,'' said Michael Kobrick, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist in charge of the project.

NASA and its partner, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, expect it will take one to two years to analyze all of the tapes.

The Pentagon will use the information to improve the aim of missiles and provide better navigation for fighter pilots and ground troops.

The best maps will be reserved for the military. Everyone else -- archaeologists, geologists, airline pilots, emergency relief groups -- will have to settle for less precise charts. But even those will be better than current ones.

Kobrick is already dazzled by the samples beamed down from orbit. The discoveries resulting from the mission should rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope, he said.

''You're going to see things just about as exciting,'' Kobrick promised.

Next up for NASA is an April ferry flight by space shuttle Atlantis to the fledgling international space station.